Monday 22 July 2013

A couple more thoughts on Revolutionary War

 
 
 
 
Yeah.

Because I never stop thinking about these things, apparently... :)

So, after posting about the upcoming return of Marvel UK's catalogue of characters yesterday I got to thinking about something I entirely missed in the Marvel interview with Andy Lanning.

Namely the following comment:


The Easter Eggs will not be limited to one country either with action reaching to the United States and, as Lanning teases, “a certain scientific base in the Adirondack Mountains.”


And I highlight that location for a reason. I'm cursing myself for missing it. The Adirondack Mountains are home to Project PEGASUS. Why's that a big deal?

Well this goes right back to 2008, when this blog was still a young wee thing, and Andy Lanning was writing the Nova series for Marvel comics, with long time collaborator Dan Abnett. During their run of Nova Abnett and Lanning had Nova (Richard Rider, Nova. None of this Sam Alexander nonsense) dropping in on Project PEGASUS several times, where Rich's brother was working for a while.

But that's not the reason for interest here. It's more who else was working for Project PEGASUS. Namely, as I reported back in 2008, one Dr Evelyn Necker.

Yes. The woman who build Death's Head II for A.I.M.

Abnett and Lanning were dropping all sorts of hints in that series. They had Necker mentioning the databases of her own 'Project MINION' and had Death's Head schematic diagrams up on the walls. It all looked like it was sowing seeds for a future story - like the plausibility of a modern day construction of DH2, maybe - but never came to anything during the lifespan of that series itself.

But that was then. This is now (plausibly even 'Marvel NOW,' I suppose).

The mention of Project PEGASUS in that article seems pretty unlikely to be coincidence, given that it was Lanning involved with the original story...

We'll see. :)

I've also found another interview with Lanning about Revolutionary War over at Comics Alliance. A bit more info here. We now know, for example, that Marvel's Steve Wacker will be editing the series and that the title of the series refers to "...the mysterious machinations that are being played out in the shadows that the heroes have to uncover and stop."

But this particular comment caught my attention:


CA: Have these characters been active heroes since we last saw them, or do we re-encounter them in changed circumstances?

AL: Twenty years in the real world is not necessarily twenty years in the Marvel Universe, but a significant time has passed since we saw many of the heroes we’ll be catching up with, so circumstances have shifted significantly for many of them.

CA: What brings these characters back into action? Who’s revolting in this Revolutionary War?

AL: One of the big changes we’ll see is the fact that since the last issue of a Marvel UK title was published waaaay back in 1993 the Marvel UK heroes have defeated their perennial foes, Mys-Tech. We’ll learn their ultimate fate and that will play a part in events that unfold that lead to the old heroes being sought out and coming back into action.


So while my original expectations might have been to see the MYS-TECH board, that may not prove to be the case. Or at least not in the way we might expect. Either way I'm really interested to see where everybody fits, now that its acknowledged time has passed. We're not just talking about carrying on as if nothing has happened. Lanning and Cowsill have clearly thought about this.

I'll be intriguing to see what they've come up with.

Oh, and this:

CA: When the dust has settled, do you hope to see these characters more fully integrated into the Marvel Universe?

AL: We will be grateful to give the old MUK heroes another chance to shine after all these years; if that leads to them getting a second lease of life, then all the better, because, in revisiting them after so long, we’ve discovered they are pretty cool and have a lot of untapped potential which we hope readers will want to see more of! There’s always room for more robots.
 And big guns!


Well, yeah. Marvel UK in the 90s certainly had those. :)

Mind you, ALL of American comics had those.

Image Comics was pretty much exclusively robots and big guns... :)

But again great to hear phrases like 'untapped potential' and the want to showcase these characters.

Makes me feel a little bit less like I've been going mad for the past 5 years, at least.

Anyway, that's all for now. Feel free to comment. While I appreciate the Twitter comments, we don't get enough of those on the Blog itself these days.

Anyway, until we meet again...

Mark (Sword)

4 comments:

  1. Interested in things That Might Have Been? Check out the G-Force Mini Series - unpublished art by John Ross featuring G-Force and the Knights of Pendragon: http://www.scribd.com/doc/155472669/G-Force-Looking-Back. Includes the full scripts by me.

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  2. Hi John. Thanks for sharing that. I remember the original Die-Cut vs G-Force series. I'll have to dig it out of my longboxes. I'll definitely put up a proper link on the site when I get a moment. Cheers.

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  3. I'm not too interested in Death's Head II but I am interested in seeing what might happen if and when the original Death's Head -- of which there are at least two versions running around 616 -- encounters him. As long as it's not a repeat of their last meeting!

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  4. Well, being very out of touch with present day Marvel series not presently reprinted in the UK, had no idea any seeds for this had been sown. Never saw this coming :)

    All rather cool as it will give me a nice bit to add into the new postscript for the Marvel UK book, the history part of which is very much on track to be completed before the end of the year... especially now there's the possibility of a being able to do a rather special launch :) That kind of thing always concentrates the mind :)

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